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Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull promotion has been nothing short of a nightmare and he has now gone five races without scoring a point in a car which has won twice this season.
In fact, since being elevated to the senior team, Tsunoda’s best finish remains ninth. He has been outscored by the man he replaced in what should be a slower car.
Liam Lawson has proven that perhaps Red Bull’s car is impossible for anyone else on the grid, other than Max Verstappen, to extract any pace from.
Sitting 17th in the drivers’ championship was not part of Tsunoda’s plans, however, it’s where he lies after 12 races. He still has fewer points (10) than Grands Prix this season.
Red Bull witnessed something alarming in Tsunoda’s telemetry after 17-year-old sensation Arvid Lindblad matched his pace in FP1 at the British Grand Prix.
Tsunoda has an ‘almost 0% chance’ of staying on the grid, which is a massive shame given the messy situation he has inherited. The Honda-backed driver deserved a better shot at the top.
Yuki Tsunoda just became the first Red Bull driver to finish consecutive F1 races last in 20 years
Ralf Schumacher says Tsunoda’s F1 career is now ‘over’ and believes that his team is quickly losing patience with his performances.
The Japanese driver will celebrate his 100th start at the upcoming Belgian Grand Prix, but first, he has three weeks to assess what has gone so wrong for him recently.
After all, teammate Verstappen is still third in the standings, and continues to defy logic with some of his performances.
Tsunoda appears to be on the other end of that spectrum, after finishing last in each of the previous two races for Red Bull.
It’s the first time in the team’s 20-year history that a driver has finished bottom of the pack in two consecutive rounds.
Helmut Marko ‘smiled’ at one 2026 Red Bull line-up suggestion, and it’s not good news for Tsunoda. He needs to start picking up some serious results to save his seat.
Why Red Bull are right to keep Yuki Tsunoda in the team for the rest of 2025
The problem with dropping Tsunoda at this stage in the season is that it could also completely ruin whoever inherits his situation.
It hasn’t been entirely fair on the Japanese driver or his reputation to be thrown in with little preparation, testing, or say in the car’s development.
But it’s a situation that he is now stuck with. Ted Kravitz says it ‘doesn’t make sense’ to drop Tsunoda too, and that he himself deserves the rest of the year to figure things out.
Maybe something clicks over the summer break and he saves his season and potentially his career, but for now, it’s a fairly bleak outlook.
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